Two more antibiotics may help fight anthrax

Researchers have identified two more antibiotics that may help prevent and treat anthrax infection in the event of a biological attack.

Currently, three antibiotics are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for anthrax--penicillin, doxycycline and ciprofloxacin. But public-health experts are concerned that another anthrax attack could involve strains of the bacterium that are resistant to these medications. As a result, finding new treatment options is important.

In the laboratory, researchers led by Dr. Duygu Esel, a microbiologist at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey, studied how well five drugs tackled 40 strains of anthrax bacteria. Along with the three US-approved treatments, the investigators also tested gatifloxacin and levofloxacin, both of which belong to a newer class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, a class that includes ciprofloxacin.

"They were all similarly effective," Esel said here Friday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

"Our findings show that the newer quinolones--gatifloxacin and levofloxacin--may be used for the prevention and treatment of anthrax, including inhalation anthrax," she told Reuters Health.

Inhalation anthrax is the most lethal form of the disease, which also can occur in the skin and gastrointestinal tract. When people inhale the anthrax spores, the spores germinate to produce growing bacteria, which release a deadly toxin.

Last year's anthrax attacks in the US killed five people and sickened more than a dozen others.